u/canibuyatrowel

Hi pals, I have to book a hotel in San Francisco for a couple days this summer and I want to make sure I do this right.

What is the best way to get the most amount of points for a hotel booking? Book through the travel booking section of the Capital One site? Book through rewards with the card to get the whatever X points on different websites like Bonvoy or Priceline, depending on who is highest? Something else?

I also saw someone say recently to do something like purchase with your card, then...do something on the back end to help make it count for more (?) miles, but I didn't understand it. They said "In the app, go to rewards, redeem points to "cover travel purchases" so if you use the credit card, have that post to your statement, then use the points to cover it, you still get points from the purchase" - what? This gives you more points? less? just as many?

Thanks so much for helping a rookie out!

I've got a Venture x, got the bonus, referred my spouse, got the bonus there, and they're getting the bonus on their card. That's 75k + 20k + 75k = 170k.

I have a trip I'm trying to take with the family that I'm estimating at about 320,000 points. I need an extra 150k after the card bonuses. (I will be applying for new cards after we get through the 3 months, $4,000 spend on this current card - trying to decide which is best to pair with Venture X for Asia travel)

Out of curiosity, as a fun thought experiment, and to genuinely see if there's any gaps in strategy I'm missing, if you were to be tasked with trying to get to 150,000 points as fast as possible, (ideally without relying on signup bonuses), what would you do?

I had a very realistic dream last night where I created something like an OF account that only accepted miles as payment, and people actually did it....a disappointing reality to wake up to, but I think it shows how much I've been obsessing over points lately! ;)